To clarifiy–
The entry below is in response to a heterosexual friend of mine truly trying to understand why the defeat of Prop 8 in CA drew such notice. He asked in all sincerity, “Why do they want to be married?” He mentioned that even he wasn’t so sure if this marriage thing, esp. via the church was truly a valid idea. Especially since most Prostestant churches reject marriage as a sacrament (the only two being communion and baptism.).  After an initial conversation, these thoughts ensued.  Peace

Answer to “Why do they want to marry?” 11/21/08

As I said, just wanted to pass along a few thoughts about this marriage thing.
I think the very real need to be “married” goes beyond the concept of  ”equal rights under the law or from another perspective forcing same sex marriages on a society that might not be ready for it” (his words). Your question was why do some feel they want or even need this so badly? Dealing with the politics and church political ramifications of it are very real but I feel they are a smoke screen for the real discussion as to “why?”

I can tell you that in realizing and/or coming into one’s “orientation” there is a struggle no matter who you are. It is a psychological process that isolates and one cannot imagine that anyone else has ever gone through what you are going through at that moment. Things to face are rejection of friends and family-either lovingly or violently (lovingly=”we understand and love you but what did we do wrong, we will never have grandkids, our lives are forever changed now, etc.” while violently=how could you do this to us, if you can live the right way get out, why did God have this abomination come from me, that is a disgusting, depraved community and deserve whatever it gives you, etc”.)

Despite the ultimate reactions, the truth of the matter is that the training and ideals of family (mostly heteronormative ideals) are ingrained into LGBTQ folk just as they are into hetero folk. We’ve all been groomed to find partnership in life, become family with that person and that the final true public/spiritual testament to that love is to be married in the eyes of God and a company assembled. Heterosexuals have a choice of whether or not this is necessary for their lives. Heteros have the privilege (damn Union word slipped out, a liberal seminary inside joke) of whether or not to be married, whether or whether or not to have children, etc. The point is that the common starting point for us all is that ideal ingrained into us from childhood-marriage.

LGBTQ life at least in regards to these proscribed ideals, is full of personal loss. Identity has to be reformed and all of those cultural/religious aspirations either must be given up or somehow redefined to match the identity that has been shaped for you with the identity that has been shaped by you in no small part by your sexual affinity. It is here where I think the question “why marriage” can be answered. It seems to me that identity is, especially once we realize that we have some say in our own identity formation, something we cling to for dear psychological and spiritual life. The less we have to shed from those core years of identity formation the more secure we are in growing into our own person. Our choices become clearer because our foundation stronger.

In LGBTQ identity formation, those building blocks that are cultural, familial, and societal are the hardest to reframe because our input on their importance in our lives has been so limited. It is like the game Jenga-trying to build an identity while with each round of life you realize the pieces of your identity that culture and society takes away is from your foundation. You can still grow and be strong and find where the new pieces fit but you are forever aware of the precarious nature of your identity because those foundational pieces like marriage, civil rights, human rights-all the things we grow up expecting– are slowly being removed because of your sexual affinity/orientation. It’s not even that it is a malicious thing. It’s just the way things are set up. I think marriage represents much of this foundational identity formation. Now that there is even the remotest of possibilities of putting this foundational piece of identity formation (marriage) back in place, people are reclaiming the piece.

Of course, there is the issue of whether or not these social constructs cause more damage than good. But at this stage of the game it doesn’t matter, that debate will go on much ad infinitum. The fact is that these constructs are in place and until equality exists the place of conversation is not a level playing field. Strangely enough it seems to me the fight for marriage equality is more of a fight for a place of privilege from which one can choose whether or not to marry. That’s my personal opinion, but it seems to me a perverse use of luxury. But then again, isn’t so much of what we fight for a perverse pursuit of luxury?
Posted by D’Rock’s House

I am a single same gender loving man, with no partner.  But I so identify with this post.  My first reaction to it is visceral.  How powerful is it to be found when you are lost in your own truth.  Lost because no one wishes to search for you; lost because you have been hurt too many times when you have tried to venture out; lost because you have come to expect people to run the other way when they hear your truth.

This small reflection could very easily turn into the sadness of unrequited love but it runs much deeper than that.  I think the idea of the church as an unrequited lover for members of the LGBTQ community is a valid one.  I think of the first dates of showing some vulnerability thinking, “maybe this time this church won’t run from me when they know my trust” only to have it happen again, and again, and again…but each time we return it gets a bit harder to tell our truth because we are in love with the community that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit calls us to be a part of.  How disorienting to leave those first, second, third and even fourth dates only to hear that you don’t matter, that you don’t fit the profile the church is looking for.  How disorienting to find that the church can actually reject you just like an intended paramour.  It is enough to make you wonder is it God that is rejecting me as well.

And so you get lost in your own truth while in plain view of the rest of the world, wondering how much of you to actually let people get to know.  But then I run across a story like this one and it hits me that the church can reject you for not fitting its profile; for it too is flawed because it is guided by human intentions.  But your truth is connected to the Divine.  I feel that God wants me to bask in my truth not get lost in it.  I feel that God wants me and my truth to shine forth in the purity of light that is its ultimate potential.  I feel that the churches rejection is not God’s intention.  And so I am here, welcomed, scarred but healed because I now have a roadmap for my truth and never have to be lost in it again…so long as I keep my truth and my love in the loving arms of the one who has loved me from the beginning.

But don’t be fooled by the reality either, there is much work to do.  The SGL/LGBTQ community has work to do in loving us who are in the church as we press forward to ram the doors open.  We need the love of community too.  So let us figure this out together.  See my truth…don’t runaway from it.  I don’t want to be lost, I want to be on the journey with all my brothers and sisters in this big old human family.  Optimistic?  Yes.  But workable?  Also, yes.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-mock/transgender-coming-out_b_1146414.html

Thank you.

And please take a look at MZR’s  blog as well.

http://thetomboyeffect.wordpress.com/

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seraphim delight
30
OCT 2011
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Occupy The Collar.

Today ushers in the 44th day of the OWS movement. It has been 21 days since I first began to wear a collar at OWS to signal myself as a spiritual presence. As a seminarian, I am preparing for ordination to become a minister in the United Church of Christ. Being a visibly queer clergyperson affords me opportunities of observance and experience that are unique to this particular kind of embodiment. Looking obviously queer upon first glance is exhausting. I am also often the token GenderQueer, which means receiving the special task of defending my sexuality AND my gender expression in one fell swoop; put a collar on that mess and now I am the target of people’s angst and anxiety of unresolved sexuality issues, gender woes, and religious baggage.

Churches hurt people. Ministers say hateful things. That turmoil often gets projected on me in my work at Zuccotti. Unintentionally, I have suddenly become the symbol of shattered dreams and unspoken rage. Sometimes this results in angry looks and questions of why I am part of “such a fucked up and oppressive system.” Other times I find myself in a full on debate about the correct place of a spiritual person inside of politics. I receive this turmoil as best I can, with a gentle spirit and a calming way. Every once in a while I get hugs and heartful words of gratitude. I take the good with the bad. This is what it means to be with people when shit gets real.

My religious tradition has been ordaining folks like me since 1972. In my previous life I came from a denomination that was not quick on embracing its queer members and clergy hopeful folks. I get the frustration; I receive the pain from a place of genuine knowledge. This being said, I also feel the strength of a long lineage of religious leaders who aren’t afraid of shouting yes into arenas where people are screaming no. Fredrich Buechner says that vocation is “where your deepest longing meets the world’s greatest need”. For every one of me there are hundreds who think I am living in sin and are in grave disapproval of my “lifestyle,” much less my vocational choices. But I don’t really care. I don’t do this work just to trump the religious right, evangelical fundamentalists, or anyone else who has traditionally had serious problems with my community. Just like my sexuality and gender expression, this calling is not a choice. The only choice I made was to accept this life. Boldly, I go into this work with radical love in my heart and the struggles of folks like me in mind. Jesus always stands on the side of love; he would have been shoulder to shoulder with the occupiers. And so, I am reclaiming Christianity as I Occupy Wall Street.

2 Corinthians 4:8-10 “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.”

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“Bishop Charles Blake endorses gay marriage declaration”

So read the headline of the Gay Christian Watch Movement in 2008 after Bishop Charles Blake the leader of the Church of God In Christ, signed The Faith In Human Rights Statement.  In 2008, Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands called together faith leaders from around the world hoping to get these faith leaders to sign the statement in commemoration of the 60^th Anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Attached are links to the documents if you choose to read them for yourselves, including that of the Gay Christian Watch Movement.  Why bother addressing this issue three years later?  After all, many of us have never even heard of this controversy.  And let’s be honest, because it occurred with the leader of a Black Church denomination it was not been on the forefront of any major news coverage in 2008.  Discussing the state of race and media, however, is not the purpose of this post.

No, the purpose of this post is to be aware of the tactics and rhetoric of the Gay Christian Watch Movement and others who ascribe to anti-gay terrorism.  In general, the Faith in Human Rights Statement is simply a mea culpa of the world’s religious leaders that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, although over sixty years old, has not been achieved.  Queen Beatrix brought together these religious leaders so that they might acknowledge the churches role in not working towards its realization.  Does the GCWM really think that with all of the crimes around the world, from continued trafficking and slavery, regimes of terror, wars and tactics of war should be rendered secondary in global and spiritual importance simply because they don’t like GLBTQ/SGL persons?

When the Gay Christian Watch Movement led with this headline in 2008, they were definitively stating that the UDHR was a pro-gay marriage document.  Let’s be real about this, was the world really thinking about gay marriage in 1948?  Is this the secret meaning to Article 16?

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

If the GCWM were being truthful it would simply state that this article has been adopted by the equal marriage movement that is being championed in LGBTQ/SGL communities, now that would be a bit more honest.  But no, it ascribes this article can only mean a support of gay marriage.  Never mind that it also applies to William Jeffs, the polygamist convicted for marrying young girls.  Never mind that post 1948 it also defined as a right, the ability for blacks and whites to marry.  It is the insidious nature of the twisting of truth that is at the heart of the matter.  Differing opinions and debate are one thing, but the vilification of someone like Bishop Blake over signing a document that supports the rights of all for dignity towards peace is another.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with the anti-gay stance of the Church Of God In Christ.  But I vehemently disagree with the inherent racism of the GCWM that finds it even plausible to try and rip apart an African American Black Church tradition simply to promote its own agenda.  How reprehensible to sow the seeds of discontent in somebody else’s house while not minding your own.

I have a proposition for the GCWM.  Read the Faith In Human Rights statement and take some of its advice:

“study carefully our holy scriptures and teachings and to explore the theological rationale in defence of human rights; provide responses where harm has been done in the name of religion and seek ways of forgiveness and reconciliation in order to foster mutual respect and understanding among our communities;”

Although Bishop Blake stands by his denomination’s anti-gay stance, he has committed to lead a denomination under this matrix.  I can disagree with him, but I can walk side by side with him to help bring the grace of God to all people, to bring a bit of God’s realm to this time, to this place.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights:  http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a16

The Faith In Human Rights Statement: http://www.oikoumene.org/fileadmin/files/wcc-main/2008pdfs/faith_human_rights.pdf

The Gay Christian Watch Movement:   http://gcmwatch.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/bishop-charles-blake/

Dear Brother in Christ,

I am writing you with the request that you share these thoughts with my brothers and sisters in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.):

It is incumbent upon all of God’s children to speak out against injustice. It is sometimes equally important to speak in solidarity when justice has been done. For that reason I am writing to affirm my belief that in making room in your constitution for gay and lesbian Christians to be ordained as church leaders, you have accomplished an act of justice.

I realize that among your ecumenical partners, some voices are claiming that you have done the wrong thing, and I know that you rightly value your relationship with Christians in other parts of the world. Sadly, it is not always popular to do justice, but it is always right. People will say that the ones you are now willing to ordain are sinners. I have come to believe, through the reality shared with me by my scientist and medical friends, and confirmed to me by many who are gay, that being gay is not a choice. Like skin color or left-handedness, sexual orientation is just another feature of our diversity as a human family. How wonderful that God has made us with so much diversity, yet all in God’s image! Salvation means being called out of our narrow bonds into a broad place of welcome to all.

You are undoubtedly aware that in some countries the church has been complicit in the legal persecution of lesbians and gays. Individuals are being arrested and jailed simply because they are different in one respect from the majority. By making it possible for those in same-gender relationships to be ordained as pastors, preachers, elders, and deacons, you are being a witness to your ecumenical partners that you believe in the wideness of God’s merciful love.

For freedom Christ has set us free. In Christ we are not bound by old, narrow prejudice, but free to embrace the full humanity of our brothers and sisters in all our glorious differences. May God bless you as you live into this reality, and may you know that there are many Christians in the world who continue to stand by your side.

God bless you.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu (Cape Town, South Africa)

Even civil unions do nothing more than bring a legal status to the relationship between two people.  Marriage it seems is more culturally privileged, at least in the United States, seems to be a pronouncement of God’s sanction of a relationship.  There is an entire historical understanding of marriage as a property transaction, not just person (usually the woman to man) to person, but also of joining families, making political alliances, etc.  That carryover is still very much present in modern marriage whether we like it or not.  The church has been complicit in this aspect of marriage by declaring this very secular purpose of two persons joining in matrimony as blessed by God.  It has always been a subjective blessing given by those who profess to have in inside track on the will of God.

It is very encouraging that we place such a value on finding “true love”.  The romantic in me is grateful that this is so.  It seems much more likely that the mystery of God is realized in the random meeting of two souls who can no longer picture their lives as a singular thing.  But as a life that one can no longer imagine living single.  I truly believe that is the act of God, that is the blessing of God on we mere humans, an invitation to a piece of the divine that is love expressed in our yearning to be with another; our only way of physically satiating our intense and spiritual desire to be with God.

I am happy for the passage of the Marriage Equality Bill in New York State.  But the fact is that many clergy can still be tried and defrocked for performing marriage ceremonies or ceremonies that in any way resemble “traditional” marriage ceremonies.  The church has said that God does not bless and make sacred any relationship other than a male/female partnering, no matter how the gender expression in the pair is realized.  But that’s a whole other issue.

I think of these things and must also share my understanding as an African American Black Man.  I can’t help but go back into the history of my people, American people of color enslaved for so many centuries.  The same church that is doling out marriage blessings, the same church that is withholding marriage blessings, is the same church that refused to recognize the sanctity of the Black family during slavery. There were many reasons to be sure—we were property, we were only a percentage human, we were savages who could not understand or were not worthy of the sanctity of a blessed by God bond of matrimony.  Ugly reality to be sure…But is it really so different than what church and society is telling the Lesbian, Gay, Transgendered, Queer communities?

Queer and Black are communities understand Shakespeare’s Shylock.  We substitute ourselves for the word Jew when he says,

“I am LGBTQ. Hath not a Queer eyes?

Hath not a Gay hands, organs, dimensions,

senses, affections, passions?

Are not Lesbians fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons,

subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means?

Are not Transgendered warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer,

as a Christian is?

If you prick us, do we not bleed?

If you tickle us, do we not laugh?

If you poison us, do we not die?

and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” (III,i,50ff)

But we don’t want revenge, we just want to, if we so choose, to get married.  Some of us want to get married in a church where we have experienced God in our lives.  Some of us want to get married in a church that has shared all of our major life events.

Some of us just want to fit into our tuxes and gowns and experience that one day that just belongs to us.  And…some of us don’t.

But when my ancestors were told they could marry what did they do?  They found something from the motherland that had meaning and incorporated that into their ritual.  Jumping the broom is still done at many African American weddings.  If you are interested in reading more about the history of jumping the broom I suggest you read “Broom Jumping: A Celebration of Love” by Danita Rountree Green.

Marriage is legal in the state of New York.  All historical, proprietary, monetary assurances can now be claimed.  But many churches still won’t dole out God’s blessing.  Well, that’s quite alright.  What God has brought together let no one tear asunder.  I say I will jump the broom when the time is right.  I will invite God to carry us into our household and future lives together.  You if God decides to bring love into my life, there are very few who hold more sway for me that God God’s self when it comes to blessing me and the one who just might come to love me.

In likewise fashion, this letter is to an imagined African American young man whose sexuality will cause him to be at risk of the same things but in response to his  church’s response to the politics of sexualities as well as his own that he holds close who share the abundance of pigment with him.

Dear Darius,

I have started this letter several times to you in the hope of your existence.   I call you Darius, the one who comes after me.  I call you Darius because this means “one who maintains possessions well”.  To you I entrust the all that I have for you to hold in a community that I can envision but which does not exist.  It is a community that I give to you to name, to call into existence.  To keep and hold the experiences of black men who love God who love men. It is a community I have longed for, one that my associations assume already exists.

I see you in the church pew amongst the sea of black, brown and beige bodies at the age of 6 or 7 dangling your feet to the sway of the music.  I notice how your eyes linger on your blink as the singer holds a soaring note invoking the Spirit of God to come here now.  How your head rolls to the right and your eyes slowly open, as if in a everlasting trance of a single moment, when the singer gasps for the breath to sing on.  I see how you jump to your feet to clap a syncopated rhythm in response to the choir’s exuberant gospel refrain.  And just last week I felt your heart yearn as your soul responded to the spiritual you are way too young to knowingly sing truthfully, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I Seen.”  And yet the furrow of your brow told me that you will know of what you sing.

As I see you, I see me.  I want you to know that someone sees you.  I don’t just see you sitting there, I see you in all your possibility.  As you grow you will be tempted to believe that your possibilities are limited.  In your blackness you will struggle with the sense that you are inferior, that something is wrong with you, that you are wrong to be who God has created you to be.  When you feel that way and don’t know why, stop and take a look at the world.  You will see that your grandfather’s mother and her ancestors before have wondered the same thing.  They have wondered why this feeling of less than when that’s not what the soul feels.  Know that it is not your blackness that offends but what your blackness represents.  It represents resilience, ingenuity, beauty, honor and history at its best.  But those things are also what pains those who would have you doubt yourself.  For they resent your resilience, begrudge your ingenuity, defame your beauty, want to replace your brazen honor with shame and have tried to erase your history.  But these things they will never have.  These things they can never have.  Through Middle Passage, through slavery, through midnight journeys north, through Jim Crow, through forest canopy lynchings, through fire hoses and dogs you still have those things we have always truly possessed that make us who we are and not who others would have us to be.

So hold onto those things, Darius for they are yours hold and to keep.  But you must hold tight.  For those around you would have these very things wrested from grasp.  They too see you in the rapturous ecstasy of what it means to be loved by Christ alone.  They too witness your reckless abandon in loving the one who loves you more than any other.  They too know of the trouble you see and will begrudge you the journey you have yet to travel.  For they will tell you that you must abandon the ways of your being if you want to associate with them.  They will whisper in darkened corners as you grow, wonder and whisper why you bring no woman home to love for their approval.  They will laud your singing and passion for the Lord, expecting you to serve at their whim while they accept you as sinner and guess at the sin in you they hate.

Whether you choose to stay or leave, neither revile nor revere them.  Honor the love of the man you choose to hold.  Honor the love that Christ has instilled in you to share as part of your gift.  Do not revere those who would shame you by recreating their way of being in the world.  Do not conform to what is their ideal; one man, one woman in service of procreation for the Lord.  Do not revile them as you choose a different path, your path as dictated by the Spirit’s guidance in your life; love in honesty, love with open heart, love to find your help meet as God has always intend you to find.

Darius, you may wonder where does your blackness and your loving of same gender cross paths in this address to you?   I tell you, do not allow the bigotry against your blackness from outside of your black family wrest away your possessions.  Do not allow the love of God’s chosen for you to be wrested away by your black family and out yonder beyond them.  Empathy may be the better part of valor.  For with empathy you see the result of the hatred of your blackness relived in the hatred of your sexual being.

For in our blackness, we have learned to perpetrate on others the hatred of our oppressors.  And this is an unintended allegiance to the powers that be will be inflicted on you unless…

Unless you find your power to witness to your possessions…Your possessions will have you witness to the struggles that have allowed you in your blackness to come this far…They will have you witness to all of your oppressors from the place, the mountaintop, from which Martin called for civil rights.    They will have you witness to your own kind…those who love like you, who look like you, who live like you…They will have you witness of a forgiving love because you will be armed with the right way of loving past the hatred and into the love that will make this world as God intended.

Like me you have been outside and are looking for a place to be.  For your sake I need to tell you these things and so I write you today.   Malcolm X tells us, “We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves.”[1] Love who you have been created to be!  Let this be the place from which you measure all else, Darius.  Your self is the most prized possession.  Not that you are to hold onto it as a dear possession to the exclusion of all else.  You are to hold it, love it, protect it and listen to it.  It will guide you through many turns on this journey.  You are not alone.  Build this community for me Darius.  For I am jailed in the trappings of my own psyche and must continue to break free of the hatred from without that is blocking me from the love that is within.  I give my hope to you.

The love of Christ and all that is holy is my prayer for you.

Jami is a 2nd year M. Div. Student who is increasingly finding a calling to work in the area of gender, gender expression and various understandings of the queer community.

The end of the semester is approaching…a little too fast for some of us.  And, we all have a lot of decisions to make.  Decisions about the future.  Should I do a PhD?  Is that class I really want to take going to fit into my schedule next semester?  What’s up with my Field Ed. are they ever going to respond?  Or, hope I picked the right place to do my CPE.  And we can never forget the ever looming…am I going to get a job after this?

We get so swept up in tomorrow we forget entirely about the here and now…

All around us spring is here. Right now there are flowers and trees blooming all over New York, at Riverside, and in our very own Quad.  However, Spring isn’t just outside these walls.  You are in bloom too.  And you all so look so beautiful.  But as we have experienced Spring has its rainy days….its not all smooth sailing, lets not get things twisted.

Spring lives within a tension between winter and summer – that tension, much like a slingshot, propels us into the next season.  Being in seminary, being at Union, can also feel like we are living in a kind of tension.  Tensions with each other, tension between the secular and sacred, the tension between knowing and accepting, the tension between intentional silence and prophetic speech. Is this tension that which propels us into our next big thing?

Like a slingshot we are being stretched, it hurts to be stretched, but the strength is in the stretching.  Each class, experience, moment of pushing yourself beyond your limits is going to boost your speed…and your distance…

Like us, the women in the passage are filled with tension.  An angel appears, Jesus’ body is nowhere to be found, the women are told to tell everyone what happened.  Women are the ones that get to explain the resurrection.

The women, the unlikeliest of messengers are the news bearers.  They weren’t worried about tomorrow.  They were caught up in today.  In Greek to tell means to report, or bring news.  These women are inside of the slingshot, and the tension of that moment is the exact energy needed to go tell the greatness of the resurrection.

For thirty years the Presbyterian Church (USA) has been in a debate about who is called. This is my tension.  My daily existence is full of anxiety, worry, and frustrations over people that don’t even know me – who are voting on my right to serve.  I’m not allowed to forget I’m a lesbian.  The adversity of living in this tension every waking second makes my passion for justice grow.  I make the tension work for me.

I imagine if people were asked to vote whether or not to allow the women at the tomb to speak……..they would have voted no.  Despite this the angel tells them to go spread the good news; they were called to bring the truth.  The unlikeliest of messengers were sent out.  And so here I stand, like a slingshot, I have been pulled back, and I’m tired of being in the slingshot.  I am ready to go.  Its going to take five more votes to release the whole Presbyterian Church from our slingshot.  Into what I don’t yet know.  But we are full of excitement and a little nervous about spreading the word.  And I am the unlikeliest of messengers.

This is my experience, what slingshot are you ready to be released from?  ……..

What message are you excited and a little worried about telling?

The women left the tomb with fear and great joy.  Likewise, after being pulled back in the slingshot, and when we are released, that exposure is both awesome…and a little scary.  But don’t forget, God doesn’t make mistakes.  God chose women in a time when they would be the unlikeliest of messengers…and God chose us, or the universe pushed us …and…that’s arguably an epic move. The women kept the moment of receiving the message quite pure.  They left the tomb immediately and ran to tell the disciples.  There was no delay.  The moment was kind of like where we are right now.  The residue of what seems like a tomb of emptiness, an unknown future, was actually the conception of new life.

If you think about it, the tomb the women arrive at is kind of like a metaphor for seminary.  We show up expecting to experience one thing, and something else entirely manifests.  Our own power startles us.  Our humanity humbles us.  Our God illuminates us.  We get it from this place, from these ivory towers.  That position of privilege is exactly the place the women stood.  But they knew they couldn’t hold onto that information.  The message was bigger than they were, larger than life. And suddenly, the perils of being female disappear and they have a compulsion to go and tell.   In a time in which the world needs to hear the good news, we are the unlikeliest of messengers to go there.  So Union, step up.  Step in.  Let the slingshot help you soar……and go tell all that you have seen………

Today is the day. Our church has finally voted to allow them into the pulpit and we are supposed to be accepting and affirming. After all it is what Christ would have us be. What I can’t quite figure out is why they have such a need to be involved in our churches. I’ve listened to the arguments and weighed them. But it just seems to me that if we are a reforming church then they can truly reform and start something brand new for people who believe like they believe.

It’s not that I’m phobic or anything. When my cousin came to me and told me that Anna wasn’t just a friend but a partner, I was glad that love had found them. I know how hard it is in that world to find a lasting relationship. They even come to all the family celebrations without incident. When we found out that Anna was pregnant we were a bit shocked, but it turns out they are great parents. So it’s not that I don’t understand the lifestyle or as they say orientation, I sort of do.

But I’m not talking about home right now. I’m talking about my church. I think what makes me angry is that nobody really talked about it here before it happened. From what I understand the church leadership has been talking about it for years but they never spoke about it with those of us who sit in the pews every Sunday. No one has ever explained why it’s all of a sudden okay in God’s eyes.

Don’t people get that I don’t come to church to be preached to about sexuality. I’ve tried to be open to these preachers when they visited but every time they preach it’s about the same thing. It’s always about how God loves them too and how it is the church’s responsibility to love as God loves. It’s a nice sermon, but is that the only message they can preach? Well now that they are officially allowed to be in the pulpit let’s see if they can just go back to preaching the Word and not preaching their message.

And not that I would say this out loud, but you just can’t help picturing what happens when they are alone while they are standing up there behind the pulpit. One time one brought their partner to church. He put his hand in the small of his partner’s back while they were talking to someone in coffee hour. And even in the parking lot when they got into the car to leave, he leaned over and gave his partner a kiss. You see that’s the kind of thing we just don’t need. That just kicks off the imagination and we shouldn’t even be thinking about that kind of thing with our pastors and preachers.

Well, I’m going to try to hold on for a few months now that we’ve chosen one to be our pastor. Seems like a nice enough person. But if I can’t work it out I have found a church across town that believes no matter what the church has decided they will never allow one to step up into the pulpit. I can always go there.

What a time. I never thought I would live to see it. I never thought I would live to see a straight person in the pulpit.

Drum Major Instinct: Still Leading For A Future Yet Unseen

I am on the board of That All May Freely Serve, a national Presbyterian organization working for full inclusion of LGBT persons for ministry.  In that capacity I am part of our board’s pastoral care team.  We use an online ministerial presence with one another to create the spiritual support and presence ‘while we are absent one from another’ (Genesis 31:49).  I offer my latest meditation and prayer to the board, wondering if in celebrating and honor Rev. Dr. King trying to answer the question, “Does Rev. Dr. King have a message for Us?

I am sitting here thinking about the sermon I am in the middle of processing for a Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock on Sunday, January 16, 2011.  It is a sermon I am giving on behalf of the Poverty Initiative here at Union Theological Seminary.  The Poverty Initiative’s mission says that “The Poverty Initiative is dedicated to raising up generations of religious and community leaders committed to building a movement to end poverty, led by the poor.”  The sermon I am preparing is based on Rev. Dr. ML King’s speech “The Drum Major Instinct”.  I’ve attached a link below.

Here is my reading for the day from that speech:

“I know a man—and I just want to talk about him a minute, and maybe you will discover who I’m talking about as I go down the way (Yeah) because he was a great one. And he just went about serving. He was born in an obscure village, (Yes, sir) the child of a poor peasant woman. And then he grew up in still another obscure village, where he worked as a carpenter until he was thirty years old. (Amen) Then for three years, he just got on his feet, and he was an itinerant preacher. And he went about doing some things. He didn’t have much. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. (Yes) He never owned a house. He never went to college. He never visited a big city. He never went two hundred miles from where he was born. He did none of the usual things that the world would associate with greatness. He had no credentials but himself.

He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. They called him a rabble-rouser. They called him a troublemaker. They said he was an agitator. (Glory to God) He practiced civil disobedience; he broke injunctions. And so he was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. And the irony of it all is that his friends turned him over to them. (Amen) One of his closest friends denied him. Another of his friends turned him over to his enemies. And while he was dying, the people who killed him gambled for his clothing, the only possession that he had in the world. (Lord help him) When he was dead he was buried in a borrowed tomb, through the pity of a friend….

I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. (Yes)

I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.

I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. (Amen)

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. (Yes)

And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. (Yes)

I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. (Lord)

I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. (Yes)

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I was a drum major for peace. (Yes) I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. (Yes) I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. (Amen) And that’s all I want to say.”

I share this text with you for a couple of reasons today.  I share it to remind us that Christ always went against the grain of what others thought should remain the status quo.  King did not  say this to remind us the suffering we have to go through in order to fight for what’s right.  He did it moreso to  remind us that greatness is adjective that is assigned to us by others.  Meaning, it doesn’t take greatness to make the change in the church we are making.  It takes very real people, willing to humbly stand for what’s right, willing to speak up for injustices. And everyone of us are a part of what makes this church we serve “great”.  You see others cannot defend the status quo of this church and it’s greatness without realizing that it is each person in it, each part of the body, is what makes up that greatness.  It’s like a jigsaw puzzle.  The picture on the outside of the box is what we call “great,” but it is its pieces working together inside the box that make it so.

In all honesty, Dr. King’s attitude toward the work we do would have had to undergo some major shifting to get behind us.  The leaders of the Civil Right’s movement relegated the openly gay man, Bayard Rustin-organizer/planner extraordinaire, to a behind the scenes piece of the legacy of the movement.  It was fear of the government leaking Rustin’s sexuality that convinced King to take a part in this process.  But in my heart, I do believe that King would have come around.  I believe that King would have stood shoulder to shoulder with Rustin in solidarity.  I believe that he would be able to finally stare Rustin in the eyes and say the words to him that mean so much for the work we do, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”*

That is a Jesus message if I ever heard one.  That is the truth of the Good News we bring to our church.  May we stand steadfast in the struggle.

I remember last fall, here in NYC we had these winds like you wouldn’t believe.  One could barely walk down the street without having the wind blow you off balance for a second or two and sometimes you could barely walk against the wind without threat of being blown over.  I remember looking out the window watching person after person walk up the wide boulevard, struggling to walk into the wind.  From a less windy side street, I saw an older couple who I imagined to have been together for at least 50 years.  Before they turned the corner onto the windier street they did something I will never forget.  They turned and looked toward one another and then side by side they burrowed into each other.  They turned the corner and walked straight into the wind together.  Step after measured step, they held tight and walked unwaveringly through that wind.  When they reached the deli their destination they stepped into the doorway and gave each other a quick kiss and went inside.

If we can continue to link arms and walk forward in the wind of opposition, we can cut through it, diffuse its power, and reach our destination. The winds died down that day.  Be assured dear friends, that we can weather the storm.  But remember to hold on to one another tightly.  We have turned a corner and are out of the shadows of the church.  That is why the winds of resistance have been so fierce upon us.  Hold on…the deli is at the end of the corner for us too!

We serve a church that tries to care for the poor, the unloved, those devastated by war, the hungry, those who don’t have clothes on their backs.  We are a church that seeks to love and serve humanity from Arkansas to Angola.  But let us continue to remind this church and shine the the light on their shortsightedness.  Let us continue to speak of our injustice here within the church as we minister to the world outside.  Friends, let us remind ourselves, the church we serve and the world we are a part of that, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  Ashe and Amen.

Loving and most gracious God,

We come to you in thanksgiving because we have come so far.  ’We’ve come this far by faith, leaning on the Lord.  Trusting in Your holy word, we can’t turn around.’  Int his moment of renewed commitment to service in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Help us to cling to one another as we move along this journey we have undertaken.  Help us to recognize our failings and our prejudices, the ones that hinder us from serving your church.  Help us to remember as we fight our struggle, so that one day all of your children can be free, that our struggle is the struggle of the poor, those in prison, those with no food or clothes.  As we get bogged down with the important work of strategizing, planning, organizing, claiming victories and mourning defeats–help us to remember that we are not just fighting our fight but we are fighting for injustice everywhere.

Bless this board, oh Lord.  That we may hear and discern your will for us and in the work that we do.  Bless the ones we love as they support us in this work.  Help us to love those who would see us fail, those who would rather see us leave your church.  Help us to maintain the truth of our ministry.  We ask these things in our solitary prayers, but we ask them now collectively that you would bless this body with those virtues that you hold so dear.

We ask these and so many other blessings, we bring these concerns and so many others in our hearts to you.  Thank you for giving us the courage through your grace.  We thank you, oh God and give thanks in the name of Christ and the blessed communion of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

*Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_the_drum_major_instinct/

picture from Yahoo Pictures